Children on the Shore, Westhaven, 1878

One of Scotland’s most famous landscape painters, William McTaggart’s paintings are typified by loose, energetic brushwork and a deep concern for the effects of light. The Scottish Gallery was McTaggart’s main dealer in his lifetime, selling many of his greatest works to the likes of Robert Wemyss Honeyman and Andrew Carnegie. There has been much discussion about the development of William McTaggart’s painting style in relation to Impressionism in France, but where McTaggart’s work differed from his French contemporaries is in the emotional content of the paintings; subjects such as children playing in the shallows, fishermen battling with a storm and ships leaving with emigrants to America. The figurative narrative in his paintings are observations on the communities with which he was connected in his own life and whose lives he recorded with such passion and poignancy in his paintings. He frequently worked on the east coast at Carnoustie in spring and summer and making painting trips to his native Machrihanish during the Autumn. This scene depicts the beach of Westhaven, on the edge of Carnoustie. Painted outside, like many of his greatest works on paper, McTaggart captures the elemental qualities of light and weather on a glorious summer day.

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